Turn off the alarm clock out of bed and look at the phone. Whatsapp answer a few of your friends owls, answer a few personal emails and a couple more from work and turn on the radio while preparing breakfast, I take while viewing the media or on the Internet that offer you saw the other day. Only these little routines, and generate millions of data impossible to digest in the old way, so it requires new systems: it is what is known as the phenomenon of Big Data.

“Big Data is based on high-speed analysis of a large volume and variety of data through innovative and cost effective ways of processing to improve understanding and decision-making,” explains Professor of Master in Digital Business at ESADE, Josep Lluís Cano.

Some figures to understand the sheer volume of information that are generated 40 billion photos Facebook or manages more than one million transactions per hour Walmart records, equivalent to 167 times all the information from the Library of Congress United States, one of the largest in the world.

The process of this deluge of data is performed through means based on information and communications technology (ICT) systems evolving. This ordering is essential to analyze the information we generate, so that it can give you later use. Cano detailed that data people produce, are useful for progress in many areas: health, logistics, energy, administration and, of course, trade and marketing.

Fingerprint and commercial use

Nobody finds it strange because after a flight search in Internet, the next day his Facebook page appears flooded with offers of hotels and restaurants in the city selected. This happens because when you travel search of a fingerprint that makes it identifies you as a potential customer of other businesses allowed.

From the point of view of consumers, we give our data when we accept, for example, conditions of a new application that down to our smartphone.

We do it in exchange for a particular service or information, we are willing to assign as the relationship compensate us, “said Cano, who stresses that often accept these conditions without even reading them.

The academic stresses that the process of data an individual does not represent a violation of their privacy always to be given for statistical purposes, that is, if we consult a route in Google Maps can use our expertise to calculate the time of the journey, but not to control where we are and what we do.

In this sense, appeals to the “ethical sense” of the organizations in using the data to which they have access, since there is no regulation in this respect that concrete limits.

Jobs

Increasing the amount of data generated it has occurred at the same time the penetration of new technologies, a phenomenon still fresh. This has led to the emergence of a new professional figure: the data scientist.

“It’s a very complex profile, as it must be someone with technical knowledge of computers, systems integration and statistics; with business acumen to analyze the data, and with imagination and communication skills to explain them to know”.

The lack of trained professionals in this area has led to multidisciplinary teams who are in charge of data analysis as colleges and business schools are moving in the preparation of new professionals having all of these skills. “It’s a great opportunity to find out in the working world”